Suicidal Thoughts
by ITNW1989
Summary: A series of one-shots detailing Commander Terra Shepard's squad's thoughts in journal form just before they jump through the Omega-4 Relay. Featuring all twelve squadmates with varying lengths in journal entries, lengthy for others, short for some. Rated T for coarse (this has Jack, so...) language and mildly suggestive scenes.
1. Prologue

**AN: Hey guys! So, a new story from yours truly, which will be going from a different direction compared to Across The Sea! This one will be a series of one-shots based on what our intrepid squad members have on their minds just before they do the jump to the Omega-4 Relay. Some will be short, others will be long, but I intend to make all of them as in-character as possible (with some possibly fan couplings *coughcoughJackandacoughcough*). So sit back, relax and enjoy Suicidal Thoughts!**

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And so he spoke, and so he spoke,  
That lord of Castamere,  
But now the rains weep o'er his halls  
With no one there to hear  
Yes now the rains weep o'er his halls  
And not a soul to hear.  
**  
- "The Rains of Castamere" by George RR Martin**

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**Suicidal Thoughts**  
**Prologue**

"Alright, has everyone done what I've asked you to do?"

Commander Terra Shepard stands before her entire ground crew plus Joker in the Comms Room in the Normandy, her hands on her hips as her emerald eyes stare at everyone inside the room. Everyone nods in answer to her question except for Jack and Zaeed, both of whom are glaring at her.

"Shepard, was this shit even fucking necessary?" Jack, the most powerful biotic currently in the room, asks. She has her arms folded over her chest as she glares at the commander.

"I agree. We should be making our way to the goddamn Omega-4 Relay, bringing the fight to those Collector bastards for what they did to our crew, dammit, not doing that pointless assignment," Zaeed cuts in, his low, rough burr slightly reverberating in the small room.

Shepard scowls at her two dissenters, though her expression is more in mock indignation than actual anger. "EDI and Joker have already plotted our course to the Omega-4 Relay," she says, motioning towards her favorite pilot. "I want to get our crew back just as much as everyone else, but we still had more than five hours before we got to the relay when I asked you guys to do this. Since we were already as ready as we'll ever be, I wanted you guys to do this…," she hesitates for a brief moment before continuing on, "in case we don't make it. This may well be a one-way trip, so I wanted everyone to leave something behind."

The implication of her words hang heavy in the air, and everyone stays silent as they digest Shepard's words. Jack is once again the first to speak.

"I don't even know anyone outside of this fucking ship," she says. "And besides, 'leave something behind?'" she scoffs. "I already left something behind: a big fucking crater on Pragia."

Shepard sighs. "Maybe something more valuable than a hole in the ground, Jack. Besides," she smirks at Jack and Zaeed, "you guys are complaining, but EDI already uploaded your entries on my omni-tool." Garrus and Tali snicker at this, while Kasumi only grins smugly. Both Jack and Zaeed remain silent, knowing when they have lost an argument.

"Anyway, how are we going to get this out in case we… well, you know," Kasumi asks.

Shepard taps her omni-tool, her expression growing serious. "I had EDI sync herself with everyone's biometric scanners, as well as a program on your omni-tools that will send a ping to EDI if your biometric scanners flatline. If EDI finds that your biometrics has flatlined and if the program on your 'tools sends her a ping, she's going to send a signal out with your message on it. It'll take a while to get to the nearest comm buoy, what with us being in the core, but EDI has guaranteed that your messages will eventually reach their recipients."

She looks at all of the members of her crew: human, drell, asari, turian, quarian, salarian, krogan, and even a geth (A _freaking _geth! If someone had told Terra two and a half years ago that she's going to be willingly working with a geth, she would have scoffed at their faces, then slugged them in the face). All of them have proved themselves at one point or another during their mission, and she now knows that this is going to be the ultimate test of loyalty. Yet even though all of them know that their mission could end up going completely FUBAR*, none of them are backing out. Shepard smiles inwardly, her pride almost showing through her otherwise stoic appearance.

"I know some of you may not know a lot of people outside of this ship, or may not be close to anyone at all. But we're still going on a suicide mission here. If we die in the galactic core, that's it. The chances of anyone finding our corpses are next to zero. That's why I wanted you guys to do this. That's why I wanted you to at least have the chance to leave something behind, even if it's just a short message, or a long-ass novel." She glances around the room and sees a few of her crew nodding. Even Jack has a decidedly grudging look of agreement on her face.

"Commander, we are now thirty minutes away before we are in range of the Omega-4 Relay," EDI's electronic voice cuts in, her voice as calm as always. "Jeff, I shall need you in the cockpit soon."

"I'll be there in a bit, EDI," Joker says, standing up and saluting Shepard as he hobbles out of the room.

Shepard nods as her posture straightens. She looks at each and every one of her crew in the eyes for a few moments each before speaking. "You heard her. We're almost there. I don't know what we're going to find in there, but I won't lie to you. It's not going to be easy. We've already lost good people… we may lose more." Her fists clench as she thinks about the atrocities the Collectors have inflicted, both on her own crew, and on humanity in general. "We don't know how many the Collectors have stolen – thousands, hundreds of thousands. None of that matters. What matters is this: not one more. That's what we can do here, today. It ends with us."

She points at each of them, her expression fierce. "The Collectors think we're helpless, that they can just take our crew and get away with it. They're wrong!" She sees Garrus nodding, Grunt bumping his two fists together, Jacob cracking his knuckles, and Jack lightly flaring her biotics. "They want to know what we're made of? I say we show them, on our terms. Let's bring our people home."

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*FUBAR = Fucked-Up Beyond All Reason

**AN 2.0: I was suddenly reminded of something when I watched Shepard's speech once again. It's more apparent if you play her (yes, her. My canon Shepard has always been female) as a Renegade, but I was reminded of The Rains of Castamere. Just replace Castamere with Collectors and you got yourself a fitting song. Well... minus the rains and everything. YOU GET MY POINT.**


	2. The Convict (Part 1)

**AN: And so here we go, Part 1 of Suicidal Thoughts! This first chapter will feature our favorite biotic bitch, and so be warned that there will be _very_ heavy language at all times, so be ready for that. On another note, I was writing Jack's journal when I realized that I really did have a lot to say about Jack, so I decided to split up her journal into two, possibly three, parts. So my updates for the next two chapters are most likely going to be more Jack! Yay! :D As always, feedback is greatly appreciated, so if you have anything to say, good or (constructively) bad, please don't hesitate at all!**

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**Suicidal Thoughts**  
**The Convict**

Audio Log of Jack Zero: The Convict  
Re: [no subject]  
Send to: [no recipient]

_*Audio log starts with loud sounds of Jack stomping around followed by a heavy sigh*_

Okay, I have no fucking idea what the hell Shepard was thinking when she told us to do this stupid journal thing. I mean, I don't even fucking know anyone outside of this ship, and I can barely stand most of the assholes here anyway. Well… maybe except for Shepard, that old fucker Massani, and… well… _shit._

_*Another heavy sigh followed by a few seconds of silence*_

My point is: I don't have anyone to leave a fucking message to! Before Shepard – she tells me to "call her Terra if that makes me comfortable," but shit; even that drell she's _fucking_ won't even call her by her first name, so she's still Shepard to me. Anyway, before she took me in, I'd been stuck in cryostasis for the past… shit, I don't even know. Weeks? Months? All I remember is being forced into that fucking cryotube after I killed those assholes who… fucked with me. They called it a 'fitting punishment' or some shit like that for what I did, but all of them deserved it, every single one of them.

You fuck with me and you'll be nothing but a smear on the wall. I've been following that kind of thinking ever since I got out of Teltin, but damn if the fucking Queen of the Girl Scouts hasn't gotten into my head one way or the other. It's like she's this some kind of weird-ass force of positivity that just burrows into your brain, no matter how hard you try to drown her out. I don't know if she's doing this on purpose, but even the fucking _Cheerleader _– the _Cerberus Cheerleader, _can you believe it?! The one who wouldn't stop kissing Timmy's fucking ass ever since I got on this ship is starting to second-guess The Illusive Man's plans for Cerberus, all thanks to Commander-Fucking-Shepard's influence.

_*A sigh and a full moment of silence *_

Shepard told us to make a journal each while we wait for the Normandy to go through the Omega-4 Relay. Said that she wanted us to leave something for others or some shit like that. _*a sarcastic snort*_ Like I give a flying shit about others. I barely give one shit about the people in this fucking Cerberus ship. "One shit." Can you imagine that? Less than half a year ago, if Shepard hadn't told me not to touch any of them, I probably… no, _definitely _would have killed all of these assholes if they even fucking thought about me in any way. I mean, come on. All of these assholes are Cerberus, except for Shepard and the aliens here. It would have been a matter of principle, you know? Now, though…

_*A few seconds of contemplative silence*_

At first, I spent most of my time in the bowels of the Normandy's Engineering Deck. Shit, the mere fact that I was there made most of the crew avoid the entire deck altogether. I guess the only reason Donnelly and Daniels – and later Tali – stayed was because they _had _to. Massani and that krogan, Grunt, weren't exactly quaking in their boots at the mere thought of me, so I guess they were cool with a biotic bitch hanging out just underneath the elevator. Of course, they didn't fucking bother me, so hey.

_*A snort of laughter*_

The one person who ever bothered visiting back then was Shepard. Let me tell you, that stupid bitch has the most annoying way of getting under your fucking skin. Had the fucking nerve to tell me that she "can't let me go on a killing spree" when I told her that all the people, their families and their friends were going to pay for what they did to me. What the fuck did she know about me? Nothing, that's what!

Nothing at all…

_*Jack trails off into another short silence*_

But it was exactly that "nothing" that made her go down to visit me almost every fucking day. Even after a mission, she'd put away her armor and shit then go down to visit. I'm not having any fucking delusions; I knew that she did this with everyone. It was pretty much a daily ritual for Shepard to personally check on each of her crew members. If I had been in the ground team with her on a mission or something, she would give me time to clean up before going down to check on me.

Believe me; I was fucking _pissed _at first. Why the fucking hell did she even care? Asking me all these personal questions then looking like she was actually listening. I thought I had her figured out, y'know? I thought I knew what her fucking agenda was. After all, _everyone _did the same. They'd pretend to listen to me, pretend that they cared until they got what they wanted. But once they got what they wanted from me, they'd just fucking toss me aside. _Everyone _did that… except for… _that _fucking dumbass.

Anyway, I was _so _sure that Shepard was after the same fucking thing. That she just wanted something from me and was willing to play nice until she got it from me. Heh. I decided to call her out on it after a conversation about my tattoos.

"_Alright, wait a fucking minute, Shepard. My turn with the questions. People usually walk by now. Why are you really asking all of these things about me?"_

I remember how she kept quiet for a few seconds, as if she was thinking how to answer. I was so fucking sure that she was actually just thinking of a lie to tell me.

"_Are you eyeing me up, then, is that it? I'm not really into chicks, but I don't really give a shit if you're a dyke. Because if this is all just about sex, you should just fucking say so."_

"_As interesting as I find you, Jack, this _isn't _about sex," she tells me, turning around to look at me square in the eyes. "I just want to know more about you. About who you are. What makes you tick and all that."_

I didn't believe her at first, of course. Guess I was just so sure that she had a hidden agenda like all the others. _*a snort* _Shows what I knew. But even after I tried calling her out on her bullshit, she kept on visiting regularly, with no other reason than to just… talk with me. At first, it was annoying, sure, but at some point, I guess you could say I was eventually starting to look forward to her visits.

Well, it's not like I just sat around doing jack shit while on my own down here. All this time, I was also looking up on Cerberus, thanks to the information that Shepard gave me. Eventually, I was able to find the location of where those assholes kept me for… for years: Teltin facility in Pragia. I told Shepard about this and how I wanted to plant a fucking bomb there and wipe it out from the maps. I expected her to refuse, to say how it would just antagonize Cerberus (I certainly expected the Cheerleader to say that, and surprise, surprise, I was fucking _right_). Guess she surprised me again. She agreed practically immediately, already comming Joker to set the coordinates to Pragia. I remember being too surprised at how easily she agreed, and she must have noticed, because she had that irritating smile on her face. It was the kind of smile that just hinted at some mysterious shit, like she knew something and was hiding it from you.

Anyway, we were orbiting over Pragia when I realized that she wanted the fucking Cheerleader to come with us to the facility. All the way down, the fucking bitch wouldn't stop whining her ass off about how what we were about to do was a bad idea, how it was going to just end up pissing off poor old Timmy. All the better if that was going to happen, if you ask me.

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**PS: So yes, I suck at cliffhangers, and I have no clue how to split up my own chapters. So sue me. T_T And remember, R&R! (Read & Review! :D)**


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